Winston Churchill was an imperialist, a warmonger, and (among many other things) an unrecovered but fully functioning alcoholic. But no one denies that he had a way with words, or that he understood liberty and freedom.

Even though he frequently fought against them.

So this quote is important to meditate on, today in the Fifty States – and around the world. It relates directly to our webzine’s name, The Price of Liberty. Ponder these words:

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”— Sir Winston Churchill

The truth of his words is self-evident. Few people may be willing to admit that we are well past the time of fighting when we could easily win, here in the Fifty States.

We can still win, but the cost of that victory, and the difficulty, increases by the year, if not the month. Across the nation, state by state, the odds against freedom build up. The confining and corroding effect of more laws, more regulations, more taxes and fees, more lawyers, more regulators and enforcers grows.

I do not think that we are yet to the final point of Churchill in this quote. Not yet are we in a situation where we fight for liberty even with no chance of victory, no chance of liberty restored. But we near that point with each passing day. Even while too many of us delude ourselves with the idea that we are gaining or regaining our liberty, our freedoms.

Worse, too many of us also are able to convince ourselves that some of the things government is doing is increasing or preserving our liberties when in reality, they are being stolen by those very actions of government.

And with each passing month, the vast gulf between those who love and want liberty and those who want more and more control and “security” and “safety” (and therefore more and more government) grows wider.

I can provide a litany of how this is happening, day by day, state by state. That may be a task, sad but necessary, in other commentaries. Suffice to say that we see it in even the smallest and most free of states, like South Dakota, as well as the larger and more tyrannical states, like California and New York. The bloody consequences of all these various trends should be horrifyingly obvious to almost anyone willing to study and observe with an open mind.

Are we prepared for what must be done? Churchill’s Brits were not, but they had friends and they ultimately did rise to the effort. But the cost was incredibly high, and I would argue that today, more than 80 years later, the British people are STILL paying for their failure to fight for their freedom, their liberty, when they should have. Part of that payment is losing so much of the liberty that they had in 1940. I do not want my children and grandchildren to pay that kind of price.